Chapter 5 - Blood on the Black Ledger
Julian shrieked as he plunged thirty feet into the freezing Hudson.
The water swallowed him whole with a violent splash.
The helicopter searchlight flared brighter.
“STEP AWAY FROM THE BOX! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!”
Dominic grabbed my arm with his uninjured hand.
“Run!” he commanded.
I snatched the heavy titanium lockbox by its handle.
It weighed twenty pounds.
We sprinted across the slick wooden planks toward the industrial shadows of
Warehouse Four.
Rifle rounds kicked up splinters around our heels.
The men in the helicopter weren't shouting standard NYPD warnings anymore.
They were firing live rounds directly at us.
“Those aren't real cops,” I yelled over the rotor noise.
“Vance’s private contractors,” Dominic growled. “They bought NYPD surplus
uniforms and aircraft.”
Vincent opened fire from the warehouse threshold with a heavy assault rifle.
He laid down sustained bursts at the helicopter’s spotlight.
The bulb shattered in a shower of sparks.
The aircraft banked sharply, blinded, giving us five seconds of cover.
We dove through the steel personnel door back into the warehouse.
Vincent slammed the reinforced security bar into place.
Rounds hammered into the exterior sheet metal like a hail of iron.
“Back exit!” Vincent yelled. “The tunnels under the old cannery!”
Dominic was pale.
The bullet wound in his left shoulder had soaked his entire jacket in crimson.
He stumbled once against an iron girder.
I dropped the lockbox, caught his right arm, and threw it over my shoulders.
“Lean on me,” I said.
He looked down at me through heavy, sweat-soaked eyelashes.
“You should leave me,” he rasped. “Take the box and save yourself.”
“I don't leave people behind,” I snapped. “Now move your damn feet, Salvatore.”
A faint, humorless chuckle rattled in his chest.
“Tough girl,” he whispered.
Vincent took point, clearing corners with ruthless efficiency.
We moved through a hidden subterranean hatch into the abandoned drainage system
beneath DUMBO.
The stench of rot, rust, and salt water surrounded us.
Above our heads, we could hear the muffled thuds of tactical teams breaching
Warehouse Four.
We moved in absolute darkness, guided only by the tactical light mounted on
Vincent’s weapon.
Every step was agony for Dominic, but he didn't utter a single sound.
His grip on my shoulder was like iron.
After ten minutes of wading through knee-deep brackish water, we reached a rusty
steel ladder.
Vincent pushed the hatch up.
We emerged into an abandoned auto-repair shop on Water Street.
A nondescript black SUV sat idling inside the service bay.
Two fresh Salvatore enforcers were waiting with medical kits and submachine
guns.
They helped Dominic into the back seat.
A combat medic cut his shirt open, exposing the clean through-and-through bullet
hole near his collarbone.
The medic began packing the wound with combat gauze.
Dominic didn't even ask for morphine.
He kept his dark eyes locked on the titanium lockbox sitting on the floorboard
between my feet.
“Open it,” he demanded.
I opened the top panel of the box.
A digital keypad flashed red.
BIOMETRIC HEART-RATE SYNC FAILED.
HOST SIGNAL LOST.
AUTO-PURGE IN 180 SECONDS.
“Julian’s alive,” I said, analyzing the telemetry.
“If he were dead, the timer would have dumped the memory instantly.”
“He survived the fall,” Dominic spat, gritting his teeth as the medic clamped an
arterial bleeder.
“He climbed into the boat,” Vincent added darkly.
“He's already running for the border.”
“We have three minutes before the files in this drive turn into digital ash,” I
said.
My fingers were covered in dried blood and river grime.
I pulled a small multi-tool from my boot.
I popped the outer casing of the digital lock.
Behind the keypad was a complex array of colored fiber-optic cables.
“Cut the blue one?” Dominic asked, watching me work.
“This isn't a Hollywood movie, Dominic,” I muttered.
“If you cut a fiber-optic wire, the light signal breaks and triggers the
thermite charge instantly.”
“What’s the play, Elena?”
01:45.
01:44.
“I need to freeze the memory bus,” I said.
I looked at the combat medic.
“Give me your pressurized ethyl chloride spray. Now!”
The medic hesitated.
Dominic’s voice dropped to an icy whisper.
“Give it to her.”
The medic handed me the small blue aerosol can used for numbing severe wounds.
I wedged the nozzle directly beneath the silicon drive bay.
I held the trigger down.
The pressurized liquid hissed violently.
A thick layer of white frost formed over the central microchip.
00:52.
00:51.
“At minus twenty degrees Celsius, the volatile RAM holds its charge even if the
circuit cuts out,” I explained.
My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I pulled the manual battery bypass with my needle-nose pliers.
A shower of orange sparks flared inside the lockbox.
The red digital timer flickered once.
Twice.
Then it went dead.
The green access light on the secondary storage drive lit up.
A soft mechanical click echoed inside the SUV.
The lid popped open two inches.
Vincent let out a long breath.
The medic wiped cold sweat from his forehead.
Dominic didn't smile.
He slowly reached forward and pushed the heavy lid all the way back.
Inside lay three thick, leather-bound ledgers.
And beneath them, a single, high-capacity military-grade hard drive.
Dominic opened the first ledger.
The handwriting inside was unmistakably Julian Vance’s.
Names.
Dates.
Bank account numbers.
Amounts paid to sitting federal judges, police commissioners, and shipping
magnates.
Dominic flipped through the pages until his fingers suddenly stopped.
His entire body went completely rigid.
His breathing halted.
The look on his face wasn't anger.
It was absolute, devastating shock.
I leaned closer to see what he was looking at.
At the top of page forty-four, written in faded black ink from ten years ago,
was a name.
SALVATORE LOGISTICS – RECIPIENT: ANTHONY SALVATORE.
PAYMENT: FIVE MILLION DOLLARS.
SERVICE RENDERED: EXECUTION OF MARCUS VALLI.
Anthony Salvatore.
Dominic’s older brother.
The man who had built the empire before Dominic took over.
I felt the blood leave my face.
The air in the SUV turned to pure poison.
I slowly pulled my Glock from my waistband.
I aimed the barrel directly between Dominic Salvatore’s eyes.
“Your family killed my father,” I whispered.
Dominic looked up from the page.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't look at my gun.
He just looked into my eyes, and for the first time since I met him, there was
pain in his voice.
May you like
“Elena,” he whispered.
Behind me, Vincent’s gun pressed hard against the back of my skull.
